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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171334">where our design has failed</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop'>anthrop</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood &amp; Manga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bodyswap, Fort Briggs, Gen, arguably soulswap, grievous bodily harm</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:34:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,286</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27171334</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything fills in hazy, unhurried and out of focus. It takes a minute to realize he’s not at the bottom of the mineshaft anymore, instead laying in some other abandoned building. Near him are dim shapes, metal probably from how the light plays off the edges. There are people a bit beyond that, talking indistinctly by a fire. He must have passed out. Idiot, for passing out after losing so much blood. That’s a good way to die.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983268</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>where our design has failed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>More deadfic for the Good Intentions WIP fest! This was.... the second or third mangahood fic idea I had after finally getting around to finishing the series in '17. I had it all roughly plotted out to where it'd have a happy ending and everything BUT hit a wall when I realized Ed would uh, not handle Al's death with any regard for the big picture. So here's the <i>start</i> of some sad as hell accidental bodyswappin' fic AU.</p><p>Title comes from Dessa's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIf3zqcnkts">"Poor Atlas."</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Everything fills in hazy, unhurried and out of focus. It takes a minute to realize he’s not at the bottom of the mineshaft anymore, instead laying in some other abandoned building. Near him are dim shapes, metal probably from how the light plays off the edges. There are people a bit beyond that, talking indistinctly by a fire. He must have passed out. Idiot, for passing out after losing so much blood. That’s a good way to die.</p><p>So where is he now? Who saved him? No one was there but Kimblee’s men. Maybe Major Miles and his snipers got down to him, were able to get him to a medic in time? He tries to move but nothing happens. Is he that weak? He can’t feel anything, so he’s either that out of it or he’s been drugged. That’d be new. He looks over at the people huddled in a circle on the ground a few feet in front of him, about to ask what’s going on. He gasps. He recognizes them all, but they shouldn’t be—they <em> can’t </em>be—</p><p>“Wait, what?” His voice sounds strange to his ears, tinny and echoing. Hearing damage maybe? That was a pretty damn big explosion Kimblee set off right under his feet.</p><p>They all twist to look at him, Winry close enough to see the relief light up her face. She looks okay. Shit, he hopes he didn’t make her cry again. That bar through his gut—he hadn’t dreamed that, had he? Or maybe it hadn’t been as bad as it looked, like a head wound. Head wounds bleed like crazy but he’s never had a stitch for all the times he’s busted his forehead open. </p><p>“Al!” WInry exclaims, rushing to him, the Xingese girl a step behind. Winry falls to her knees, and they’re face-to-face like he’s sitting up. Weird, he probably shouldn’t be sitting up so soon. </p><p>“Alphonse!” The Xingese girl cries. Oh good, he thinks. Al must be nearby. Mei’s her name, isn’t it?</p><p>“Thank goodness you’re okay!” Winry says. “I was so scared you might not wake up, I didn’t know what to do!”</p><p>“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Where are we? How’d you find me?”</p><p>Winry frowns. “Don’t you remember? We dug you out of the snow ages ago.”</p><p>“Dug me out?” That doesn’t sound right at all. The skies had been clear, as far as he can remember. He would have frozen or bled out if there’d been another snowstorm before anyone found him.</p><p>Behind them he can glimpse Scar, Dr. Marcoh, the first two chimeras, and that Yoki guy all staring at him. </p><p>“You passed out on us,” Scar says, glaring at him from by the fire. “You were too big to carry in one piece, so we split your body up.”</p><p>“My <em> what? </em> What the hell are you talking about?”</p><p>“Are you okay?” Winry asks. “You sound… strange.”</p><p>“I don’t—” He breaks off, the lumps in his peripheral he’d dismissed earlier clarifying to recognizable bits of metal. Two empty arms and a familiar horned helmet. “Alphonse? Hey, why’s Al in pieces?”</p><p>“Mister Alphonse?” Mei asks worriedly, but Al doesn’t answer.</p><p>“What’s wrong with him?” Yoki asks, leaning around Doctor Marcoh to stare curiously.</p><p>“Alphonse?” He calls out again, panic humming through him. Damn it, why can’t he move? “Al?”</p><p>“His voice,” Scar rumbles. “Is that…?”</p><p>“Al, wake up, this isn’t funny! Al?<em> Al! </em>”</p><p>Winry leans closer to him, eyes wide. “...Ed?”</p><p>“Winry, what’s go—?”</p><p>“Is that really you?”</p><p>His breath catches—</p><p>No.</p><p>No, his breath <em> doesn’t </em>catch. He only makes the sound of it. He’s not—</p><p>He isn’t breathing. He hasn’t <em> been </em>breathing. </p><p>He tries to move again, to lean away from Winry, to sit up, to put his hands on Winry’s and demand to know why she came back for him, but nothing happens. He looks away—or no, his vision waivers and dips and he expects—<em> hopes— </em> to see his body, to see arms and legs and a mile’s worth of bandages, he doesn’t even need two arms and legs, he’d be happy to see a couple of empty ports so long as he sees <em> himself— </em></p><p>But his body isn’t there. There’s only a concave stretch of metal, curved enough to stand upright on a packed dirt floor. A curtain of chainmail distorts the helmet sat before him, where his legs should be. He stares at the frizzed end of Al’s chopped-off hair.</p><p>“Winry,” he says. He can hear the metallic echo to his voice now, feels the absence of all the feeling that should come with talking—breath in his lungs, vibrations in his throat, muscles and bone and tendon working in tandem to articulate noise into meaningful syllables. That’s all gone. There’s just his voice, ringing out of the curved edge of a piece of steel. “What happened?”</p><p>“Is that Edward?” Mei asks. “But how is that possible? Where’s Alphonse?”</p><p>Winry covers her mouth with one hand, not quite stifling the shock that slips from her. The other reaches out to him, her gloved fingers too close to his eyes—no. Not his eyes. He doesn’t <em> have </em>eyes. Her fingers hover over the seal he’d drawn with his own blood four years ago to save Alphonse. “I don’t understand,” she says, her voice shaking. “How are you in Al’s armor?”</p><p>“I don’t—I don’t know.”</p><p>He thinks. How could he have ended up like this? He’d been at the bottom of a mineshaft, miraculously uncrushed by tons of rubble. But there’d been that damn rebar jutting out of his gut. He hadn’t gotten a good look at it, just felt the weight of it pressed against his spine, an agonizing strain on his abdominal muscles, heat flushing down his skin, the heavy spill of blood from his mouth. That much blood meant his stomach must have gotten torn up. Probably his intestines too. That’s a lot of damage, to go along with that much blood. He’d definitely blacked out. Lost time. But before it went dark, he’d felt….</p><p>Maybe he’d imagined it, but it… it had felt a lot like before. Like forcing his way out of Gluttony, and being eaten by Gluttony before that, and before that too, when he and Al had tried to bring Mom back.</p><p>But he couldn’t <em> remember </em>. If he’d passed through the Gate, he can’t remember what might have happened. Why would he even have passed through it in the first place? He sure as hell hadn’t been thinking clearly enough to open the Gate. </p><p>“Ed?”</p><p>He looks up at Winry. She’d moved back at some point, while he’d been thinking. Mei’s come closer, knelt neatly and staring at him with her head tilted curiously. “Why’d you take Al apart?” He demands. </p><p>“He’d collapsed,” Scar repeats.</p><p>“Collapsed? Why?”</p><p>Winry hesitates. “He said his body was pulling his soul back.”</p><p>He breathes sharply—no, <em> no </em> , he doesn’t. He just makes the sound, and it rings out of the blood seal noisily. “You’re <em> sure </em>that’s what he said? He saw his body?”</p><p>“I don’t know, he didn’t have time before—” She takes a shaky breath, her hands tangling in her lap. “Edward, I don’t know what’s going on. Where’s Alphonse? How are you here?”</p><p>If Al collapsed the moment he’d been impaled…. “One more question. How… how long has it been since Al collapsed?”</p><p>“Two hours ago, at least,” Doctor Marcoh rasps. “Why?”</p><p>His body couldn’t have lasted ten minutes in the shape he’d left it in, let alone two hours. </p><p>“Ed?”</p><p>“I—” He stops. He <em> has </em>to stop. There’s too much. This is too much. His voice sounds so strange now, and now it’s all he has left. “Put—can you put me together? Please? This is—” Terrifying. He can’t feel anything, not the cold or the ground or the faint breeze playing with Winry and Mei’s hair. He can’t smell the fire. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t need to breathe. </p><p>“—weird,” he finishes lamely.</p><p>She wants answers. He can see it in the knitting of her brow, the tense set of her shoulders. Mei too, she looks scared, and the men still by the fire. “Please,” he says again.</p><p>Winry relents. “Okay.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>((This is where Mei realized she had to take the research notes apart, but would that still happen with Ed there instead? Prrrrobably, and then Ed’d have to be the one to suggest flipping it all around. Blur past this so it’s not a word-for-word recreation, maybe have Winry stay beside Ed and keep putting him together, and she’ll come to the conclusion he got hurt. She’ll remember his theory about his and Al’s bonded souls.))</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The breastplate disorients him badly, his vision remaining in the dark inside for a couple awful seconds before jerking up on its own, and then he’s peering out of the neck guard between the slats. The helmet isn’t as bad a jump, but the height still throws him. He’s sitting properly now, the rest of Al’s armor reassembled, and he’s eye-to-eye with Winry.</p><p>He didn’t try moving while they buckled Al’s armor back together, said little when Winry gently tried to pry answers from him. He’s trying not to think about his body, sprawled in a pool of blood that’s probably frozen over by now. He’s trying not to think of the implications, of knowing for sure there’s no going back to his body, when they’d hung onto hope for Alphonse’s and finally got the first real shred of proof that it was feasible to restore him.</p><p>He’s trying not to think about what this means for Alphonse, and failing pretty hard at that.</p><p>“That’s the last of it,” Doctor Marcoh says, patting—some part of Al’s armor. He wasn’t looking to see where, but he hears the metal ring out. “How’s it feel?”</p><p>Like nothing. Not like the pins and needles of numbness or the phantom sensations he gets in his automail sometimes. Just… nothing. He is aware. He hears and he sees, and that’s all he has.</p><p>He tries a hand first, and it moves easily into his peripheral, huge leather fingers squeezing into a fist at the barest brush of thought. He’d expected resistance. Reluctance, at least. But Al had only ever struggled to adjust to the size of the armor. There’d been a lot of dents knocked into the walls and doorframes of the Rockbell house before Al had gotten used to it.</p><p>“Are you okay?” Mei asks with surprising gentleness. Ed looks at her, bundled up and still shivering, and he can’t feel anything at all.</p><p>He did this to Al, four years ago. He’d thought he’d understood just what it meant, to be a smear of blood in a suit of armor. He’d been such a fool.</p><p>“I will be,” he says softly, and sets his arm down. He watches it, like he’d had to watch his right arm and left leg constantly, when he’d still been adjusting to them too. He’s got to be careful. He doesn’t have anything else to gauge his reach or his strength with now.</p><p>“Ed,” Winry starts again, but hesitates when he looks at her. Her jaw is set, her mouth a pale slash in her face. Beside her, the others are quiet and attentive. Waiting to understand.</p><p>Ed makes a sound like sighing that hums all wrong in his empty chest. “I… I really messed up this time.”</p><p>“What happened?” Scar asks.</p><p>Maybe because it’s Scar who asks it’s easy to let it spill out. Someone he doesn’t like, someone he truly hates; it cancels out all the panic threatening to drag him under and leave him a babbling wreck. He just ends up numb, and the words are easy. “Kimblee knew it was a setup from the start. Him and his other two chimera got the jump on me—” He glares at the two chimera, who only shrug. “I took care of them easy enough. I thought I got the better of Kimblee too, but it turned out he had more than one philosopher’s stone.”</p><p>Doctor Marcoh inhales sharply. Ed drops his gaze, looks at the leather gauntlets in Al’s—in <em> his </em>—lap. The spikes along his forearm scrape against his thigh as he shifts, out of habit rather than out of any discomfort. He watches a small gloved hand touch his wrist, Winry crouching to look up at him. Her eyes are shiny, like she’s holding back tears. His fault again.</p><p>“Ed, please. What happened?”</p><p>“That bastard blew up the mineshaft,” he whispers. He tugs his arm free of Winry’s, pressing the glove to his side, where he’s pretty sure the rebar had pierced. The sound of a leather glove patting against leather straps. He feels nothing. “I survived the fall okay, but…”</p><p>“...But?” Winry prods in a quivering whisper. Edward makes the sound of a sigh again, unable to meet her eyes. There's no way she won’t cry about this. He can’t blame her at all.</p><p>“There… I was hurt. Really hurt this time. And there weren't any soldiers nearby who might have seen me fall. So I… I don't think I survived.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s been a few days since the mineshaft, though Al can’t be sure how many. At least two, but less than five? Probably less than five. He hopes it’s been less than five days. </p><p>It’s very disorienting, to lose time like this. To have slept, even if it’s been the hazy in-and-out sleep of unconsciousness and strong pain medication. He hasn’t slept in four years, after all.</p><p>However long it’s been, this is the most alert he’s been yet. Hand-in-hand with that, this is the most aware he’s been of how <em> wrong </em> everything feels. He has cold Northern air filling his respiratory system, oxygenating the blood his heart is pumping through his vascular system, a digestive system growling for more than the thin broth the doctors allow despite the recent holes punched and patched through his stomach. His muscles are sore. His wounds throb. His stumps <em> ache </em> despite the Northern automail. His skin itches, wanting for a shower. He has to <em> pee </em>.</p><p>All his, because he’s inhabiting this body. But it <em> isn’t </em> his. He has no right to be in this body at all, is horrified at this—this <em> trespass </em>he’s committed. This is his brother’s body, perhaps only still alive because of his use of Kimblee’s philosopher’s stone—and though he can justify it all he likes, can insist that this body would have died if he hadn’t used it, he knows with absolute certainty that his brother will be furious with him when he finds out.</p><p>Wherever Ed’s soul has ended up, anyway.</p><p>He keeps hoping this is a dream, even though it was impossible for him to dream in the armor. This can’t be real. This can’t really be happening.</p><p>“So that’s that,” he says.</p><p>He’s finally finished explaining things—to the best of his ability—to the two chimera that had saved his soul and Ed’s body. It’s taken a while, both because of the sheer amount he had to tell them as well as adjusting to the sheer amount of <em> effort </em>it takes to make a badly injured body keep talking. Impalement aside, he’s just not used to how much goes into talking. There’s a mouth and tongue and teeth, figuring out where to breathe between words, vibrations in his vocal chords, the weariness of his healing body tugging him to sleep without realizing it until he wakes up again, the soreness that comes with talking at length when you’re in no position to. He’s exhausted again, struggling to keep his eyes open. Judging from the dubious expressions the chimera are both giving him, it’s clear the conversation isn’t over yet.</p><p>“You sure you didn’t land on your head when you fell down the mineshaft?” Heinkel asks skeptically. </p><p>“Well no,” Al says. “It wasn’t me that fell down it, after all. I just woke up with the beam through Brother’s stomach.” Literally. He swears he can still taste blood, though he’s rinsed his mouth out every time he’s been awake enough to ask for water.</p><p>Heinkel and Darius grimace. </p><p>“Look, Elric,” Darius begins uncertainly. Al can appreciate the neutral use of their last name. Whether they believe him or not, it’s better than them calling him Fullmetal. That was annoying enough when he was in the armor. “We’re not alchemists. We were just soldiers before we got dragged into a lab and made into what we are now. This is… this is a lot to swallow.”</p><p>“I doubt most alchemists would readily believe it either,” Al says, giving them a weak smile. That just makes them look more uncomfortable.</p><p>“Well you sure are talking differently than when we were fighting.” Heinkel sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>NOTES</p><p>Ed injured in the mineshaft</p><p>Al pulled into the Gate, facing his body which smiles and points behind him. He sees Ed’s Gate and Ed’s truth sitting before it with Ed’s withered limbs, and It grins at him as both Gates open. He expects the hands to pull him through his own Gate but instead it’s the hands from Ed’s that swallow him. He manages to twist in time to see the hands from his own curling around an empty stretch of air, and wonders—but the darkness swallows him</p><p>Al wakes up in a riot of agony, confused and overwhelmed because <em> feeling </em> and also <em> agony </em>. He’s briefly overwhelmed by the sensations and realizes that hey, shit hell damn fuck, this is Ed’s body he’s somehow ended up in and it is dying very quickly. The automail throws him too, reacting not half as fluidly as it seemed to for Ed, but he manages to sever the rebar and kind of wriggles around trying to place where he’s at. Spots the philosopher’s stone but it’s definitely out of reach, and his vision’s starting to spot. Hears the chimeras over his ragged breathing, frees them, begs them to help save his brother. They assume Ed’s just gone out of it with blood loss but help readily enough. Darius gives him the stone, asks if he even knows the first thing about bio-alchemy. Al says he picked up some here and there, but really the stone ought to be enough. He apologizes, but he has to justify using a stone to save his brother’s body. Heinkel yanks the rest of the rebar out and Alphonse heals what he can. The stone helps but frankly he really only has a haphazard knowledge of human anatomy, and he hasn’t had a body in four years, so hey, he definitely still passes the fuck out.</p><p>Meanwhile Ed comes to the conclusion that his body died and his soul—somehow—got booted into Al’s armor at the expense of booting Al back into his body. He wouldn’t hesitate to trade another limb to get Al’s soul back because he doesn’t deserve to rot in that place with Truth laughing at him, but all he’s got left is his soul and that’s an equivalency he can’t afford. He has no idea what will happen if the armor rejects him or he tries human transmutation, and he has to be selfish for now. Al would understand, right?</p><p>Al will have a scene at the doctors’, having explained what the hell to Darius and Heinkel and likewise being filled in as best as they understand it. They’re shaken at the thought of what’s happened to the Elrics but believe it readily enough, considering they’re impossible creatures. He’ll struggle with the automail, surprised that he’s having more difficulty with the steel than the flesh. </p>
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